My Wishlist

David Panton 'out of the Time' [Pantonmusic Pm7073]

Although free improvisation had always been an option in my One Music projects, for a brief period - between 1972 and 1974 - it became the main way of operating. These archive recordings should give a general impression of those performances.

Although free improvisation had always been an option in my One Music projects, for a brief period – between 1972 and 1974 – it became the main way of operating. The reason for this singular approach followed a degree of negative responses from some musicians to my usual methods of performing and, in spite of my misgivings, I decided to take up the challenge of totally freely improvised performances. These took place in groupings with others (such as percussionist Roy Ashbury, guitarist John Russell, drummer Dave Solomon, and with John Stevens Entourage project, as well as many others in informal jam sessions and workshops) but mainly completely solo, at a variety of venues in Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Southampton and London during this period. Much of this material went unrecorded, or if it was recorded proved to be musically and/or audio-wise of insufficient quality to make generally available, so these archive recordings should give a general impression of the kind of performances which took place.

In October 1972 I also began working with the Chameleon Laboratory Theatre in Southampton – an experimental group which was a spin-off from a theatre-in-education project in the city – to devise and execute the musical input for their presentations, so my musical activity was not entirely confined to free improvisation. Direct benefits to my improvisatory performances of this association however were that the various bits of home-made percussion I had accumulated were now attached to more stable metal frames provided by the group, and on occasion the actors gave voices to my own experimental/modernistic writings, apart from the theatre pieces also being presented at The Little Theatre Club Festivals with John Stevens blessing – one occasion allegedly inspiring Stan Tracey and others to turn the end of evening free jam session into a more jazz orientated one after I accompanied one scene with a rendition of ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’. * My instinct for open and inclusive musical sources was never completely abandoned.The tracks on this album are taken from a solo performance in Southampton in 1973 and recordings made at Birmingham Arts Lab in 1970. On playback the former – an original 38 minute continuous performance on mainly metallic percussion with some alto saxophone and viola highlights – seemed to lack any continuity of interest, so it was decided to break up the material into a smaller set of pieces which had some kind of individual integral coherence. Even so the sameness of the mainly percussion pieces still called out for something else to break up the monotony of their timbre, and so it was decided to dovetail them with the four items from three years earlier. The 1970 recordings were made on a mono Ferrograph machine while the 1973 recording was made on a stereo Revox B77 machine, so there is some noticeable audible difference in the qualitative change from the one to the other, though not enough to be problematic.

Tracks 1 and 2 – Extempore 1 and Extempore 2 – involve a certain amount of juggling with both percussion and alto saxophone on the former and viola on the latter without the benefit of overdubbing/multi-tracking. While this choice of multitasking happened quite spontaneously during the course of a performance, it did not always come off successfully and did come in for some criticism: Ken Hyder – a drummer himself of course – was less than enthusiastic about such a performance at an Oval House Festival he reviewed in Melody Maker.**Percussion track 3 – Extempore 3 – is followed by the first of the 1970 tracks. Track 4 – Interlude 1 – was performed on a piano frame which had been removed from its case and keyboard and propped up against a wall. As I recall The Little Theatre Club in London was also one of the few venue which provided the same kind of ‘instrument’, mainly to protect their ‘proper’ piano. Percussion track 5 – Extempore 4 – is also followed by a piano frame improvisation. Track 6 – Interlude 2 – like its predecessor was also an interlude between the original alto saxophone pieces on the 1970 recording. Derek Bailey found my piano frame playing more interesting than my saxophone work, presumably because it is inevitably random pitch-wise and relies on rhythm and effects to sustain interest. ***

Percussion track 7 – Extempore 5 – is followed by the first of two performances of words and improvised music, but not voiced by the Chameleon Laboratory actors, since none of these were recorded. Track 8 – Nobody Cares Who Cares – was written in 1967 in the ‘Sound Poem’ style of repetition and permutation of just those three words which were seen on an advertising hoarding of the time. Pete Starke – who was then running the Arts Lab – recites the words against the piano frame. Percussion track 9 -Extempore 6 – is followed by the second words and music track. Track 10 – Night Time Thought Time – is similarly constructed on the repetition and manipulation of just a few words which gradually change their meaning and imagery. Once again Pete Starke recites the words in addition to also playing a piano frame intro and coda as well as ringing a bell at the appropriate moments. At first the saxophone may appear to be improvising on a written tune, but it was in fact improvised in the moment in a jazz style to echo lines relating to ‘listening to jazz’. This may not be considered true free improvisation but is consistent within the context of the performance. Derek Bailey always considered my saxophone playing sounded too much like jazz.***

Percussion track 11 – Extempore 7 – finally brings things full circle in conclusion, echoing the percussion sounds which opened track 1. Ultimately I personally found the idiom of freely improvised music more restricting than liberating and finally brought things full circle returning finally to the more open and inclusive One Music methods I had used prior 1972 and which I continued to use again from 1974 up to the present time. DP